7 Hidden Easter Eggs In Games That You Weren’t Supposed To Find


Correction – We would like to apologize for the confusion regarding our description about the events that led to Romero’s head being present in the game. Our earlier description was highly inaccurate. We’ve now updated the article.

When you’re part of a huge team working on a massive game, putting in crazy hours, barely sleeping, for years on end… sometimes you’ve just got to troll a bit and let off some steam. Sometimes, they’ll hide a little Easter Egg message for fans, like this Bioshock Infinite gem:

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via imgur

Other times, it’ll be an entire hidden room, or even an area that was used for development but not supposed to be in the final game. In any case, here’s a handful of different things that were discovered in video games that the developers never expected anybody to actually find.

7. Romero’s Severed Head

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John Romero’s head hidden inside Doom 2 is stuff videogame legends are made of. Romero’s friend and co-developer Kevin Cloud hid it inside the game and likewise John also hid his own voice in the game which said “To win this game, you must kill me, John Romero.” Bobby Prince helped him getting it into the game.

Everyone involved in the development had a laugh about it and people who found this easter egg joined them in doing so. John was known for his humor and this showed how he didn’t bother with jokes at his expense for entertaining others. Truly a legend.

6. Rude Announcer

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Wave Race: Blue Storm was a launch title for the Nintendo Gamecube. Hidden in the audio settings menu of the game (That nobody ever goes to unless they’re trying to turn down the in-game music…), is a second announcer track for the game that will talk trash to you, with quotes like:

“Just because you’re going around in circles, doesn’t make you a big wheel.”

When you’re setting up a race and choosing your player, he’ll tell you that you’ve chosen poorly. He’s sarcastic, rude, and generally disinterested in being the announcer at all. If a little trash talk gets you motivated, this is one of the most effective gaming secrets ever.

5. The Chris Houlihan Room

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Hidden deep in the code of A Link To The Past for Super Nintendo, there’s a room filled with broken promises and the crushed dreams of a child. When Chris was a kid, he won a contest in Nintendo Power magazine to be in a video game. Every little kid’s dream, right? He should have been the coolest kid on the block, right?

Well, one team of developers made a special room for Chris, another team removed the entrance to it. So when the game finally shipped, poor Chris couldn’t find himself in the game at all. He probably spent all year bragging to everyone in school, then when the game came out they all probably called poor Chris a liar.

Years later, thanks to the internet, several ways to enter the mysterious room were discovered and shared, and our boy Chris would get his redemption. Once you get inside, you find Chris and he’s basically like “Wsup, I’m Chris, here’s my room.” (paraphrased.) So all’s well that ends well, I guess.

4. The Pen Is Mightier Than The Gun

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Remember back in the day when video games did random, fun stuff for no apparent reason, a lot more often than they do now? Even the biggest AAA titles seemed to take themselves a bit less serious. Like Big Head mode in 007, and the countless other Goldeneye cheats to discover.

In GoldenEye 007 for the N64, there’s a special hidden mode that looks like it was drawn on a sheet of white paper with a pen. It was practically unplayable (unless you had literally memorized every single level), but kind of cool to see from a fan’s POV none the less.

If you want to check out Line Mode, you’ll need to dust off your Gameshark. The devs used it for debugging.

3. Fighting Professor Oak

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Here’s another one for everyone who has still got a Gameshark kicking around. You can fight Oak, but be warned – he’s a lot tougher than any other bosses in the game, so make sure you come correct. It’s a real “student becomes the master” kind of moment, if you’re up for the challenge.

It’s unclear why this battle was cut from the game, but it’s a shame either way.

2. Desk Jockey

The craziest thing about this hidden thing is the fact that somebody found it in the first place. How!?

In Resident Evil 2, if you search Wesker’s desk 49 times… nothing happens. But if you search it 50 times, you’ll find some undeveloped film. You can take said film to the dark room to develop it and see what’s on it, or you can just scroll down for a split second, because we’ve saved you the trouble.

It’s mind-boggling to think how somebody might have discovered this. Did they search every area in the game? How many times? Plus, you know once they finally discovered something, OCD is going to force them to go back and try searching other places 50, 100, 500 times. What happens when you search Wesker’s desk 10,000 times? Try it and find out.

Search Wesker's desk 50 times to reveal a photo of Rebecca ready to shoot some hoops.
Search Wesker’s desk 50 times to reveal a photo of Rebecca ready to shoot some hoops.

When they programmed this little Easter Egg into the game, did they really think anybody would find it?

1. Here Lies Link

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Here’s what you find when you take the time to stop and smell the flowers, or to read every tombstone you come across, as the case may be. This is from Final Fantasy 1, and you can see for yourself by tracking down the three tombstones in the screenshot, in Elf Village.